1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component. In particular, the present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component that includes a ceramic sintered body having a substantially rectangular parallelepiped shape and a plurality of first and second internal electrodes alternately arranged in the ceramic sintered body so as to face each other.
2. Description of the Related Art
In electronic devices, such as cellular phones and notebook computers, multilayer ceramic electronic components, typified by, for example, multilayer ceramic capacitors, have been frequently used.
In recent years, multilayer ceramic capacitors have become smaller and smaller and their capacities have become larger and larger. A large-capacity multilayer ceramic capacitor of 10 μF to 100 μF is used in a power supply circuit or other circuit, in which an aluminum electrolytic capacitor or a tantalum capacitor is traditionally used. Generally, capacitance is proportional to the relative dielectric constant, the opposing area of internal electrodes, and the number of stacked layers of the internal electrodes and is inversely proportional to the thickness of the dielectric layer. Thus, to achieve a large capacitance within predetermined dimensions, various techniques have been used. For a large-capacity multilayer ceramic capacitor, the thickness of the dielectric layer must be no more than 1 μm and the dielectric material, for example, barium titanate must be finer such that the grain size is at or below 1 μm while achieving high crystallinity. The number of stacked layers of the internal electrodes may reach 1,000, and the electrodes are required to be smooth and have wide coverage. In addition, the ceramic layers and the internal electrodes are integrally sintered and formed into a monolithic structure in the production process, and it is required that an internal stress caused by expansion and contraction in the sintering be reduced and the structure have no structural defects. To this end, various multilayer ceramic electronic components and methods of producing the same are described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-318060 and other documents, to produce a multilayer ceramic electronic component in which defects, such as cracks and delamination, after firing can be prevented even when ceramic green sheets and internal electrodes are made to be thin and to be stacked high.
One example of a method for enhancing functionality of a multilayer ceramic electronic component is a method of developing a ceramic material having high functionality. Unfortunately, the development of the ceramic material having high functionality requires time and efforts.
Another example of a method for enhancing functionality of a multilayer ceramic electronic component is a method of thinning a ceramic layer, increasing the number of stacked layers, and increasing the opposing area of the internal electrodes.
Unfortunately, the multilayer ceramic electronic component in which the ceramic layers are thin, the number of stacked layers is large, and the opposing area of the internal electrodes is large suffers from low electrical strength.